Stopping Iran: Moving Forward

We discussed Iran last night on Crane Durham's Nothing But Truth, Crane's weekly program which airs live Sunday nights at 7PM EST on 97.1 FM TALK - St. Louis. At issue was the latest 'revelation' that Iran has enough nuclear material - if enriched further - to produce one nuclear weapon.

I took two approaches:

First, this isn't really news. Iran does not have enough material enriched to weapons grade - so far as we know. We've always known they have enough raw or low enriched material. Getting it to weapons grade has always been the trick, not possessing incomplete materials, which they have had plenty of for some time. Then there's the question of constructing a device that works even after they have ample amounts of HEU.

Second, at the same time, this should serve as a wake-up call. If you did not realize they had enough material awaiting weapons-grade enrichment and are now alarmed to learn this, welcome to the club of the alarmed. We must acknowledge that the only thing worse than war with Iran is a nuclear armed Iran - chief state sponsors of international terrorism. And they are proceeding apace.

The most important point made was that we simply must begin materially supporting Iranian dissident groups within Iran. There will be no stopping Iran without stopping the regime itself, and the only administration with a lower level of domestic public support than the Bush Administration is that of the mad mullahs and Ahmadinejad. We should be leveraging that - and exacerbating the drop in oil prices - to make governance for the regime increasingly difficult, requiring it to divert shrinking resources to the people of Iran and governance and necessarily away from their nuclear weapons gambit.

And we have to have the courage to stand against the regime and with the Iranian people. This is, after all, a regime which leads its people in chants of "Death to America" on a weekly basis. Mustering domestic American popular support for their internal undermining can be achieved with the most basic communications skills. And, of course, the actual will to do so among American political leaders.